What's the deal with blue people?

That's right. It's a vaccinated only show and a masking up show, so everyone be safe, get out there and come check us out live. We'll see you on January one. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and uh, Jerry was just here. She said peace out, suckers, and this is stuff you should know. Of course, it was nice of her to log on to say goodbye. Right now,

we're just getting Jerry. She's been busy lately. Yeah, what happens. It totally happens in this busy, go go world of almost two The Double Deuce this year has just flown by. It really has I think mercifully because this is going to be part of the lost years when we look back, you know. Yeah, it felt like eighteen years and somehow one has just like been in a snap. Yeah. I don't know what's going on. I don't think anyone does anymore, Chuck,

So don't don't feel bad. Uh. Can we shout out to the people and sources that helped us along for this one? Well, our buddy Dave Rouse wrote an article for our Stuff Works. Uh, And I found a great article from Wired. I forgot how much I love Wired. That's from Mallory Pickett and BBC News, ABC News, NPR Morning a Dish, which is always a fun listen. Uh, National Library of Medicine here in the US. And then, as always, I feel like it makes appearance in every

episode Jamaica Hospital dot Org. That's right, surprisingly helpful? Yeah, maybe not surprisingly? I wonder is that Jamaica Queens or Jamaica Jamaica. Oh you know what I was thinking, Jamaica Jamaica. Maybe Jamaica Queens. Yeah, should I Jamaica scene Jamaica Queens. My neighbor across the street, neighbor has uh is from Jamaica, the country, and I feel like a heel now because I was like, hey, that hospital websites great. Pat, She's like,

what are you talking about? She's like, okay, great, glad you like some rando hospital website. Oh boys, so we're talking today. You went and found some medical stuff. That's why you went to look at Jamaica Hospital dot org. I'm guessing because we're talking about a really interesting condition and actually a few kinds of conditions that have something unusual in common, and that is that the people who

suffer from these conditions have blue skin. Blueskin. You heard it here first, everybody, even though this really first started hitting the presses in two thousand eight. Yeah, I mean you didn't hear it here first. This, I mean, this is all over the internet. But we're talking about not the Blue Man Group, but the Blue People Group of Kentucky. It's a family that is I guess it's pronounced few Gate. It's not. No, that's Italian. He was from France. Well

that's that's a spoiler. Oh is it? I'm sorry? I take it back. Everyone. You know it's not a spoiler. But for some reason, when I saw that the original Martin Fugate was from France. From uh, I'm not sure what part of France, but I was like, that's surprising. It was like, I don't know why it would be. Uh. Yeah.

He could have come from anywhere in the world, and he would have been like a completely overlookable person, I think, totally lost to history had it not been for the rare um rare genetic mutation that he happened to carry with him. And even that wouldn't have gotten him into

the history books, Chuck, Even that wouldn't have. Instead, it took Martin Fugate to happen, upon against all odds, to have found a wife who he was not related to, who was a total stranger from a totally different country, who also happened to have that same rare genetic mutation. And when the two get together, capal blue kids start popping out. That's right. He came over from France to Kentucky, to the Blue Hills of Kentucky. Ironically, Oh wow, I

hadn't thought about that. In And like I said, he was from France when he was an orphan, so he didn't know a lot about his his family as far as uh, whether or not any of them were blue, I guess, or if so, he wasn't he wasn't piping up a out. Yeah, maybe he just kept it quiet. But he did marry a redheaded American named Elizabeth Smith, and they headed on over to Troublesome Creek near Hazard

County in Kentucky and set up a homestead there. And it is a I mean the one of the doctors that uh from one of these articles said, you know, it's maybe one and a one hundred thousand chance that you have to even have this genetic mutation. And he said, but you know, once you start, I guess there's no other way to say it. Once you start in breeding, which can happen in the eighteen hundreds in the rural nous of Kentucky, he said, that can go down all

the way to like one in eight chance. And that's exactly what happened. Yeah, I was surprised there was even one in eight. But there's some little fluke of genetics that, um, that you have to when you're talking about probability in genetics, it's a little more difficult than half in a straight math. Yeah. Um. So apparently Martin himself possibly had like a little bit of blue to him. His wife Elizabeth had no blue to her um. She apparently had very very pale skin

and bright red hair. But when um the two got together and those two genetic mutations donated UM their mutations to that specific gene, they the kids that they had were like, um, irresistibly blue. Like there was no confusing. It's not like, yeah, Martin's kind of blue. If you ever noticed, maybe you need to breathe more deeply. This was like straight up blue kids. I've even seen him described as dark blue, not even a bluish hue or tint or tinge dark blue skinned children. Yea, four of

seven were blue. Uh. And it's funny he said that she was not. The mother was not blue tinted. But I imagine, like before they knew about genetics and in breeding, if he would, if she would been a little blue, that might have been a reason to get together, you know what I mean? No, I don't explain. Well, blue man happens to meet blue woman and they're like, jeez, there's another one like me, and you know we've been sort of you know, sort of embarrassing and maybe we're

cast out a little bit. So let's hitch our wagons together because there's probably nothing wrong with us having kids, right, His medical science hadn't known that at that point. It's a story as old as time, Chuck, but it was. It was just complete happenstance though, right. Yeah, So, UM, And I wonder also, like it was significant to me that they pointed out that his wife, Elizabeth Smith um

few Gates skin was almost translucent. It was so pale, because I wonder if she donated that to her children, UM, which allowed the blue to really shine through even more. Maybe it's possible, like the ultimate recipe for blueness exactly. Um. And they actually became owns, this blue family, and they were not particularly proud of their blue skin. I think

they were a little freaked out about it. I think that their neighbors may not have particularly treated them well, and so they already lived in like a pretty isolated part of Appalachia, UM, but they took pains to actually isolate themselves even further. And one of the one of

the consequences of that was something you touched upon. That that meant that, Um, their son married their aunt, and cousins married cousins, even if they were way too close to be marrying, and so one of the one of the products of these this inner marriage was an entire small regional population of blue families or families who have blue children or Blue family members, because these neighbor families were still blood relatives of the few Gates who initially

settled this area and just started reproducing through inbreeding. Uh. And the condition that they had is not a skin condition at all. It's actually a blood disorder like you mentioned, and it's called medima globinemia. It's so pretty good. Wow, you're so it's not meth now, Okay, Oh, I'm glad

you said it first. Then I actually took great pains today to look up between this and the other episode we're recording pronunciations, and when you look at medima globinemia, that is seventeen letters of it's a mouthful of letters, pure hell. And it's really one of those that I looked at over and over and just could not get it right in my head until I, you know, went and looked it up on the internet and I was like, that's not so hard, all right, let me try. Let

me try mediema globinemia. I think it's more of a t than a d uh, okay, what about a t you want me try that one? This is like the worst acting audition ever. What's my motivation here? Uh to get through this episode? Uh So we're gonna touch a little bit on melanin throughout this episode. But you remember melanin from our I think pretty good episode on sunscreen

and sun tans, right. Uh? And this is uh, you know, special cells in the body, in the skin make melanin and they are Melanin is responsible for coloring your skin. And there are all kinds of different uh melanin disorders, whether you have too much or too little, whether you can you know, we'll make your skin lighter or darker, or whether or not it happens in patches. I had a friend in Los Angeles with bid eligo, which oh you do, which you know leads to uh, patches of

light skin on the body. In't that what Michael Jackson claimed to have had to Yes? Was that verified? I don't know. I don't know either. I really don't know, because I just remember there was a big stink when that came out and everyone was like, yeah, right, the well the reason why it was like, really it's you got videlago because it's usually um patches like the melano sites.

The melanin producing cells just kind of poop out or crap out in an area, and it it leaves like patches without pigment, not your entire face, um without pigment. But who knows, well, I think his I think what he said was that he bleached his skin to match the light patches. Was his reasoning. Oh, well, that's fairly reasonable. You know, if you're self conscious about videlago and you have a ton of money, you could do something like that. Who knows, Who knows? Should we talk about skin color?

Should we take an awkward Michael Jackson break? I think we just did. But the point is this that I think you're making, Chuck, is that changes in like your skin color typically have to do with a lack of or an overproduction of melanin. Right, And that what we're talking about, uh, mattiemoglobinemia right, is actually a blood disorder. It's not has nothing to do with the skin. It just shines through that super translucent skin that we have. Right, So what's going on here in the body? Okay, So

are you surprised, I'm asking you. I'm a little surprised. I thought we maybe tagging team this one. But okay, okay, so, uh you have like a pink is shoe too, typically being being Caucasian. Um, because you're there's not a ton of melonin that's blocking the blood supply underneath and your tissues. It's kind of shining through and your blood is red.

And the reason it's red, Chuck, is because because the reason why blood is red, well, remember in school they teach you that your blood is blue until you get cut and then it hits the air. Yeah, that's not true, and then it turns red. That's what you hear on the playground in elementary school from dumb kids. But that is not true. And I bet you anything, kids are still spreading that mistruth on the playground. Yeah. It's got some staying power for sure, as far as as far

as rumors go. And you know what, my dad will sue your dad for all the money he's got. Did you guys threaten lawsuits? Sure? We were very lutitious kids did though. It was very funny. We were like, we're like little Puritans in in Salem town. That's right. Uh

so blood is red? That was a question, right? Uh? Yeah, yeah, why is blood red, right, because I don't know we've talked about this before, but it's because our red blood cells have hemoglobe and it's a protein and it gets its red color from something called hem It's a compound that has an iron atom in there, and that iron atom is the key. That's what binds with oxygen and allows red blood cells to get oxygen all over the body, and that's sort of what makes us tick. Yeah, it

definitely is. I mean that oxygen is super important, so we want to have super red rich hemoglobin blood. Right. Our bodies also produced something else called metemoglobin's I guess is how you would pronounce it. That is not how I've been pronouncing it in my head. But these metema globins are basically the same thing as hemoglobins, but they have a different kind of iron attached to them. The iron they have is like, there's really another way to

put it. Actually, there's plenty of other ways to put it, but one way you could put it is that is rusted. It's oxidized iron, which means that it's missing an electron that it would need to bind oxygen, which means it's useless for transporting oxygen. Through the blood. So if you have a bunch of metemoglobin built up in your blood, your blood can reasonably turn blue. You also may have some problems breathing um because you don't have any oxygen

in your blood, although that's not true, I'm sorry. You would be able to breathe, breathe perfectly fine, but it wouldn't clear up necessarily the lack of oxygen your blood because it's on a blood level um rather than something to do with your lungs. Yeah, that was my one question, because doctor after doctor is confirmed that mativa globinemia doesn't present any health issues. But how can that be possible that your blood has is having trouble carrying oxygen to

your body and it doesn't matter. I had a really hard time with that too. And the best I could come up with as far as an answer, which is not definitive, but the best that can come up with, is that there is a there's a threshold where your blood will turn blue, where you have enough metema globins in there that it's blue, but not so there's not so many metema globins that you're actually having trouble with

your oxygen in your body. So it can turn blue long before you actually like suffer from the effects of low oxygen um. Does that make sense? Yeah, I guess that makes sense. And isn't the threshold to turn your skin blue like a really low percentage, even like one

percent of metemaments. If you're blood is one percent in team of globins, you can start to turn blue right So it doesn't take very much, which means that you have of of the global the globins in your blood are are hemoglobin, which means you're still able to get all the oxygen you need. You just have maybe a little less than somebody else. That's my best guess from what I saw UM, and I think at this point in our understanding of my team of globalemia, it's as

good as anybody's. Well. That sounds like a perfect place for a break, Okay, and uh, we'll be right back to talk a little bit more about this and other interesting blood conditions right for this, So, Chuck, where're talking about my team globe and temia um and the reason like, like I think one of us said earlier that the body naturally produces these things, um, these metema globins um, but we also produce an enzyme that can convert excess metema globins into hemoglobin, and it's got a doozy of

a name which I just love. May I take this one? Yes, this enzyme is called reduced nicotinamide adenine dionucleotide cytochrome B five reduct as one of the great all times nicknames. It has no nickname. You have to say the entire

thing every time. And so this enzyme, reduced nicotinamine ad aine dionucleotide side of chrome B five reduct days is actually capable of converting the iron from its um ferric state in metema globin's into its fairest state, which is capable of binding with oxygen like the kind that's found in hemoglobin. So, for all intents and purposes, reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide cytochrome B five reductase is capable of converting metemoglobins into hemoglobin. And most of us are able to

do that. But if you're like a few gate and you have that rare genetic condition where both parents donated that mutation to you and you developed metemoglobinemia, but there's some reduced amount of reduced nicotinamide adenine dionucleotide cytochrome B five reductas, which means that that metemoglobin's that you naturally produced are able to build up and accumulate in your blood. And when they do that, and they they they that's how you start to turn blue. That's how you cross

that one percent threshold. That's right. And this is one of the rare times where you can actually have a genetic condition that's pretty easily solved. And in this case, it's just a pill. Uh. And the guy who figured this out has sort of an interesting story in his own right. His name is Madison Coween or Coine Kaween. I'm going with col Wayne cal Wine, Colween, c A w Ei and Coween, although I like cow Wine. That doesn't sound like you'd be tasty, but I'll beg it

gives you a pretty good bus. Uh. He was the h He was the grandson of a pretty famous at the time poet out of Kentucky. Uh. And Madison was the third of of the Madison's. And this is just a side note, very sad and interesting. His wife was poisoned and murdered by poison in the nineteen sixties and no one was ever caught in charge with a crime and it kind of remains one of Kentucky's um, you know, sort of biggest cold cases. Wow, I did not see

that one coming. Yeah, he and his wife and this other couple were out drinking all night supposedly like just got slashed and at a at a at a country club. Um. He Madison didn't even make at home. I think he stayed the night there, but the other man, the man from the other couple, drove his wife home. Um, apparently just dropped. They had another nightcap and she woke up dead. One didn't wake up dead. She died and they thought it was just you know, alcohol or some natural cause.

But then they found these two like little needle pricks in her where they think she was I guess given a shot to pass out and then poisoned. And I can't remember the poison. It was some sort of like acid or something. But yeah, really really interesting. Neither here nor there as far as this goes. But that's the sad story of Dr Madison. Uh cow wines wife. Was he a suspect because I would have suspected him. I

don't think so, because he wasn't even there. That's the first thing I thought but apparently it was pretty verified that he slept it off at the country club. I guess crazy because yeah, well, I mean one of the things that he became famous for, if not the thing he became famous for. It wasn't jacting people with with some fairly weird stuff. I know, isn't that weird? It is weird. You're not buying it. No, I don't want

to like cast persions on somebody. I don't know enough about the story, but that's just very odd, especially like judging from this ninety second story, exactly I can conclusively solve this case. I've seen enough law in order to know that the husband almost always did it else that is probably true, but probably not in this case. But at any rate, he was a hematologist at you at the University of Kentucky, and he heard about these people throughout the world and really wanted to kind of get

to the bottom of this. When a couple of them, uh well, I don't think these were few gates, but Patrick and Rachel Ritchie, I guess you know it happened in some other family. Know the Combs is. We knew it Combs from Kentucky. We had a friend that we worked with for a little while. Really he was never struck me as blue. Yeah, he never struck you. But I wonder if he is related to the combs is,

which would make him vibe some somehow. Few Gate because again, these these families in the few Gate area where all if you went back far enough, few Gates exactly. All right, So these people walk into his office and what happened? So here here's the thing, Like, they didn't walk into his office, he went and found them. I read an article about him, and he became maybe a little obsessed with finding these people. Wanted to know what the heck

was going on. So he actually went out in the woods and would wait for them, and every once in a while would see one and he chased them, telling him to stop, and of course they would run off. So he figured out another way to do it. He moved to Hazard County near Troublesome Creek, and he started asking around at clinics, like had anybody ever treated a

blue patient? And he finally struck gold Um blue Gold when he spoke to one nurse at a clinic that said, yeah, this this one woman came in with blue skin and she was really self conscious about her skin. She came to the back door. Was really just kind of me, he can embarrassed. Um, but yeah, we've treated a blue person before. So Colween basically hung around this clinic until more blue people came in and that this is where he met the Richie siblings. Yeah, so he started to

dig into their family a little bit. Uh. It became pretty obvious to him that it was a genetic disorder, and he started digging around other stories around the North America and found an Inuit population in Alaska who had who had the same condition. I'm just gonna call it this condition now. I think we said it enough, at least I have. And he said, well, you know these people were interbreeding a lot because they were very remote as well. And so he said, I think we understand

the problem here. How do we fix it? Yeah, I don't know if he where he he got this idea, but he used something called methylene blue, which was already like in wide use. It's used to staying tissue because it affects some cells differently than others. Um, it was a malarial treatment, which malaria can actually produce matema globe anemia. And suddenly having trouble saying, because we have been practicing lately.

Um And what it does is it goes in and it interacts with the reduced nicotinamine, adenine di nucleotide side chrome B five reductation and basically gives it a boost and helps convert all of that excess um matema globins into hemoglobins in patients with metema globe anemia. And so I don't know where he got the idea, but he tried it and apparently injected the Ritchie kids with it,

and they they stopped being blue, like almost on the spot. Yeah, Like minutes later they returned to a to a you know, a standard color, and I mean they were overjoyed. Could you imagine being like this your whole life, getting a shot and looking in the mirror a few minutes later and you're like, oh my gosh, it's like it's it's gone. It's actually really sweet because they were very self conscious,

the whole family. I mean, this family like retreated to the woods to to like people didn't know where they lived, and they lived like five miles away from him and knew that there's this blue family still had no idea where they lived. It was like that's how far they retreated from society because they were that self conscious. So yeah, I'm sure it's a pretty joyous occasion for them. There's gonna be a movie about this at some point, right,

I can't believe there's not. There's a very famous interview with Kyle Wayne in a magazine called Science Ad two. And there's also a really famous painting that somebody did and it was just kind of lost to history who did it? And I read this article. I can't remember what it was on, but this person tracked down, um, the artist, the initial artist, and got to see like the original. Because it's been scanned so many times, it's really lost a step. But um, the originals apparently really

something to see. Should we say the quote that head in that science he said, he said, and they walked in the office, he said. They were bluer in Hill, very Kentucky. Alright. So over time, uh, a few gates started moving away, like some of the younger population of the family got out of Hazard County. And it's so hard not to make Dukes of Hazzard jokes. I've been just sidestepping the whole time. I've been doing really great,

thank you. But they started to move away over time, and basically you know, that's gonna stop the inner breeding and that's gonna make fewer and fewer blue babies. And as of I think some were still blue, but not today. Yeah, I think now that there's a treatment and easy treatment because they don't even have to be injected anymore. Like if you're blue and you don't want to be blue, you just take a methylene blue pill once a day

and it goes in. Apparently once you excreted out the methylene blue, you'd go back to being blue, so you have to take it daily. But I'll bet there's members of that family now and I'm just guessing here, but um that are proudly blue now that they know that they don't have to be blue, some of them I'll bet make a choice to be blue as kind of like a like a pride in their family heritage. I'm

guessing here. Well, the thing I saw that there was one and that was the one in twelve that was still blue, like by choice, I think, so, yeah, I just didn't take the pillow. That's neat, But but not today anymore. So this is uh not the only way you can get bluish or any you know. I guess silvery skin is another. There's another thing that comes into play here with this next disorder, and this is one called argeria. And some people are bluish, some people are silver.

If you've looked up you know blue people or silver people online, you have no doubt seen uh Paul Harrison. They called him Papa Smurf, and he is all over the internet as one of the more famous cases of Algeria. Yeah, and he was. He kind of emerged as I don't know if a cautionary tale is right, because that was not his purpose. Um, but he he also he whether he meant to or not, he served as a cautionary tale about taking colloidal silver because that is what turned

him blue. And it didn't just turn his skin blue. It turned his mucous membranes blue. So if he like flashed his teeth, his gums were blue, and the inside of his mouth was blue, the inside of his nose was blue. He was blue blue or in hell, as Kawayne would probably put it um. And he he did it because he saw an article about how um silver eyeons basically restored some cut flower back to life again, and he thought, well, that would be really something to to to see what it can do on a human body.

I want to be a fresh daisy, right, And he wasn't the only person at experimenting at the time, Like apparently for a while it was a over the counter drug. We've been using silver for a very long time. But he was, um, somebody who used it every single day. He was drinking like a ten ounce drink of colloidal silver. He figured out how to basically make his own colloidal silver potion, and he also rubbed it on his face too, and so in very short order he started to turn blue.

Because that is definitely a consequence of using silver too much of overexposure to silver, that's right. Uh, And this can happen if you work in like a silver mine or something like. It can be one of the side

effects of mining silver mine. I also saw that in the old time, um, not even that old, but just pre digital photography processing photograph processing, you could actually um yeah, you know the eighties, Um, you could actually develop algeria be from exposure to the silver dust that was used to expose um photographic plates. I think prior to the eighties. I I don't know when they stopped using that. I

don't either. I spent a lot of times in dark rooms as a kid because my dad, because you were a mad go in there, turn on that red light and sit there and think about what you do. Now. My dad was an amateur photographer, well I guess, and my professionally sold stuff, but he did his own developing, and um, I learned how to do it and did it something through high school and then kind of quit doing it. It It was a lot of fun. Though. Dark rooms are very like peaceful places, is that right? Yeah?

Just you know they're dark obviously, and you're in there for a long period of time, and it's just very nice, usually by yourself, but unless you're in a teen romance movie and then you know the cute girls in there with you, I well, I always associate them with the murderer finally coming into focus, and they happen to be staying right next to the photographers developing it. So to me, dark rooms are very tense, scary like as it as the as the photo paper like comes into focus, very tense,

the calls coming from inside the dark room. That's right, Um, where were we? Okay? So what causes this is an excess of silver ions in your body and when they're exposed to light, they react by forming dark deposits on the skin that end up looking silver ish. And the bad news about this is, once you've got it, it's there. You can't take a pill and get rid of it. No, it's irreversible. We don't have a way to remove excess silver from the tissues and the human body. And that's

all it is. It's just it builds up. Normally, the body can excrete you know, small amounts of silver that we're exposed to from like you know, touching silver or um snorting silver, that kind of stuff. Um, you know, uh, like we pee it out, We poop it out and we get rid of it. But if we overcome that threshold and our silver ingestion um exceeds our ability to excrete it, it starts to build up in the tissue.

And so if you're drinking your own tent outs colloidal silver um homebrew every single day, you're going to overwhelm your body's ability to excrete silver very quickly, and it's going to build up and build up and build up, and pretty soon you're going to be blue or silver blue,

that's right. Uh. And if you look up images of Carrison you're probably also gonna find pictures of Stan Jones, a libertarian politician in Montana who around why two K said, you know what, I think things are gonna go south and we're not gonna have any antibiotics. So I'm gonna start making my own again colloidal silver solution and drink

that stuff. And then there was a teacher in Brooklyn, too named Rosemary Jacobs, who uh, very sadly I think got um nasal drops with silver when she was a kid, and she was sort of not sort of she was very silver for life. She was. So these people again have proved to be cautionary tales to most people who are like, oh, that's what happens if you take too much silver. I'm not going to take colloidal silver saw pplements over the counter, um anything like that. I'm just

gonna steer clear silver all together. Because one of the problems is there's not a lot of pure reviewed evidence, if any, that suggests that silver has any beneficial effect when taken internally right, it is actually anti anti microbial. It's pretty clever to um use silver like in the pre scientific days, but there's nothing that says like, yes, if you drink colloidal silver homebrew, it's going to have any effect on your on your life or your health,

and in fact, it might actually turn you blue. Despite this, people still take colloidal silver um pretty frequently. Apparently, Alex Jones touts it, Gwyneth Paltrow touts it. Dr Oz touts it. And that's you know, if it's not actually harming you, there doesn't seem to be any any harm from it,

aside from potentially irreversibly turning blue. But there's a larger harm that I saw chuck to society in general, and that silver is a anti microbial of last resort, that is, um, they're figuring out how to use it against um my antibiotic resistant bugs like mersa. That silver will get in there and even kill mersa. But that silver resistance may be developed in bugs by all these people taking colloidal silver supplements and drinking colloidal silver um, you know, homebrews

and stuff like that. That is actually creating silver resistant microbes, which is not a good thing for anybody. All Right, Well, let's take our second break, good, yes, and we'll talk a little bit more about coloidal silver right after this. All right, So you mentioned earlier that uh kind of in passing that cloydal Silver had been used pre UM.

You know, mainstream medical science coming on board, and it's really true, and they were kind of onto something and that, like you said, there were there are some anti microbial properties. So people like Plenty the Elder Cyrus to the Great they both touted the use of silver. Monks in the Middle Ages used silver nitrate UM to treat ulcers and burns, and it was used a lot. It's it's kind of in a way before we had real antibotics, one of

the first antibiotics. Yes, UM again externally, it messes up microbs and we're not exactly sure even still today what the mechanism is. The guesses are that somehow penetrates the membrane of the of bacteria and prevents it from replicating properly UM or it had it does like some one two, which is on enzymes that the microbes need to to survive UM, but that it it will leave your human skin cells alone. It just attacks microbes weirdly bacteria specifically UM.

So yeah, it was like an early antibiotic and it actually kept UM stayed in use for a long time now to nowadays, you'll find it in like wound dressings. Sometimes suitures will be coated in silver. Replacement joints artificial joints will have some sort of silver component to it to to protect um against infection UM. But we were using them internally for a really long time up until the sixties. Even I think babies got like silver eye drops when they were born, which I had not heard

of until you know, yesterday. I had neither yes, silver nitrate to prevent eye infections, but then they found out it can actually cause eye damage and burn the skin. So they really worked on UM just sort of, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? When you make something less potent by mixing it with water diluting it right on the tip of my tongue, You did it, No, you did it. So they learned how to dilute it.

But the problem with diluting it in a formula is it wasn't an exact science, Like they didn't know exactly how much silver was still going to be active, and so you know, you couldn't really use it as a medicine anymore because it was either too weak to do anything, or it was so much that you risk turning blue. So eventually they just scrapped it as a medicine and said, I think in the FDA said this isn't a medicine.

You can't advertise it as such. So they said, all right, well to say it's a supplement and just move it to the shelf, you know, four ft away, and the Ft said, and that's what happened, and you can still get this stuff. That's where you know. That's why when it's Paltrow uses it. Yeah. So, and I mean, like again, it's one of those things where it's like, yes, it makes sense. Silver has an anti microbial properties. There's probably some microbes in your body you don't want um, so

take some silver and see if it works. But again, there's just not any pure of viewed evidence that backs this up. That's not necessarily to say that it doesn't work. Just because there isn't pure viewed evidence that backs it up doesn't also necessarily mean in the same breath that there's plenty of pure viewed evidence that says it doesn't work. I'm not suggesting anybody take the stuff. I'm just saying there's not pure of viewed evidence to back up that

it actually does anything. And if you do take it again, you risk permanently irreversibly turning blue. Yeah, and and I should point out I don't know anything about Gwyneth Paltrow's current usage, but this her appearance on Dr OZ was when she touted it. She she may have given it up, who knows? Who knows? Um. Paul Keason never gave it up the chuck. He died in uh two thirteen as well, same year that Gwyneth Paltrow outed herself as a silver

user um and Paul carrasan Uh. He apparently used colloidal silver that homebrew he made up until the end. Like he never stopped, even though he apparently retreated from the public eye because he was tired of being treated like a freak or a weirdo UM and had some rough years towards the end apparently after he went public, but he's still kept up with the colloidal silver, although that doesn't seem to have been linked to his death. He was also a really heavy smoker for many years, and

he suffered a heart attack and a stroke. Yeah. I mean, I guess his point was probably while I'm already blue, Yeah, like why stop? Now? You can't get much bluer? So uh, what else you got? Well, I just thought we'd wind it up with this little kind of sidebar. Uh. I can't This doesn't really have any to do with being blue or silver, but I thought it was an interesting find that, uh, they basically determine. Uh, there's something called repigmenting that has happened to people, uh to go their

skin both darker and lighter. That has nothing to do that in this funny in this article kept calling it inter marriage. Um, what they mean is you know or or yeah, what they mean is having sex and having babies, uh, two different skin colors. But they keep calling it inter marriage, which I guess is uh, you know, very sweet. It's just such a lovely way to put it. It's but they know that repigmenting happens regardless of uh, inter marriage. But what they found recently is that this has happened

a lot faster than anyone thought. And we're talking about a hundred generations, or as little as a hundred generations, which is a long time, but over the course of human history, it's not that long. It's potentially not. Yeah,

it's not that long. Usually a generation is chalked up at about twenty years, So we're talking as little as two thousand years, groups that were once lily white went back to being dark, and groups that were dark can turn into a lily white population, and that it's it's it's just basically more evidence that race is strictly a

social construct. Skin color has nothing to do with anything but the amount of melanin that our genes tell our bodies to produce, which is triggered by the amount of UV exposure that we have over something like a hundred generations, right, And so if you're family lineage moves from a place that has lots of UV near the equator to a place that doesn't how much daylight or vice versa, your body is going to adapt and melanin production is going

to change, and over time, your entire family's skin color can change. Yeah, because we actually need UV, right, but we just need a certain amount of it. If you have too much, you can get skin cancer. Apparently, it can have reproductive issues. If you get too little. It can also have issues on your bone because we use UV to produce vitamin D, which we use for for strong bones bone density. So our bodies have figured out how to kind of adjust depending on that you V

exposure by producing or slowing down melanin production. That's it pretty amazing, pretty neat. But it is surprising that it's well, actually, it's not that surprising that it can happen over a hundred generations or two thousand years because the body is very responsive to its environment. We adapt very easily, so that's not particularly surprising, although it is neat. Yeah, I mean it's surprised the scientist. I think they just thought

it was quicker than they anticipated. So if you're a racist, just stop and think that somewhere down your family line there is a white person or a black person or in the future. Yeah, that's true. That's right. So take that. You got anything else? I have nothing else? All right, Well, if you want to know more about blue people or colloidal silver or pigmentation, go start reading up on it on the internet. Uh. And thanks again to all the great sites that you found in putting this really good

episode together, Chuck. And since I complimented talks episode putting together skills, it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this, uh, one of the many thanks we got for the m Not in Array, but the the Mr Not episode, Uh, this is one I think for both of us like we were super stoked to do and like in retrospect, very proud of you know, we're stoked. We were super stoked, not just stoked stoked. Plus, there's no way to say stoked without sounding like the bro. No,

no way at all. It stinks too because I'm not a bro, but I do like things stoked. That's fine to say stoked, be loud and proud, like the last remaining blue fugate. So this is from Mark, and it was a really long one that I'm gonna just sort

of summarize. The first part, uh, is that Mark works in healthcare information technology and had a rough go of it over the past couple of years, like so many people, um working alone and uh listening to our show, which he said help quite a bit, losing some close friends to COVID and seeing all this up close and personal. So Mark had a tough time. So he says this, after working for almost two years on the COVID nineteen problem, the last thing I wanted to hear was your podcast

about Mr No vaccines. When I saw the topic pop up on my player, took a deep breath and decided to listen. Anyway, I knew almost everything you shared on the podcast, but became enthralled in the recap of this amazing story. To my surprise, I was again brought to tears with a recognition one that you two share of these brilliant helpers who use their gifts for the benefit of all humanity. At the risk of making you blush.

You two are part of those helpers. You presented this mr NA episode with the childlike curiosity and relatable simplicity that anyone with doubts on taking the vaccine would reconsider. I can't believe that I have to say this, but facts help and fact shares are helpers. I might also add that letting go of any bias is to let your curiosity curiosity take hold is heroic. Uh. And that is from Mark, and boy, I'm gonna read that one another hundred times today. Yeah. Just print it out and

fold it up and keep it under your pillow. Yes, thank you Mark. He wanted his last name to be with help but appreciates Mark. You've done Mark, and hang in there. Yeah. Same same to you, Mark. And UM, that was very high praise. Thank you very much for it means a lot to hear something like that. Um. One other thing they chuck that that Mark reminded me of that people with matima globe anemia actually can blush blue. Oh so they get bluer. Yeah in that neat, I

guess that makes sense. Thanks for that to Mark, even though you had no idea, you're setting us up for it. You did, so you're just basically a an altogether great person. If you want to be a great person like Mark and right in to let us know whatever you want to let us know we want to hear from you, you can wrap it up and spank it on that bottom until it's blue in the case and send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.

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